I recently had the privilege of listening Jay Goltz give a talk. Jay is a successful Chicago entrepreneur, professional keynote speaker, and blogger for the New York Times business blog. Jay’s founded many successful businesses in the Chicago area including Artist Frame Service, Jayson Home & Garden, Chicago Art Source, and Bella Moulding. I’ve actually read about Jay from the book Small Giants before I got a chance to meet him in person. It’s not the norm that I take a lot of notes at these talks, but with Jay I left with 2-3 pages worth of notes.
Jay’s big secret to business is not much of a secret at all: Take care of customers. For him, in order to be successful in business, you have to succeed in 3 areas: Marketing, Management, and Finance.
On Management
- Hire the right person
- Turn off the entrepreneur when interviewing people. Don’t lead the interviewee
- Don’t hurry hiring
- Lower expectations, raise standards. People don’t know what to expect, so set the standard.
- Hold people responsible
- Get rid of your own naivete
On Finance
- Keep inventory under control
- Debt is sometimes OK. Don’t pay cash for depreciating assets you can finance to solve cashflow problems.
- You can’t give all 3: quality, price, and service. You have to pick 2.
Here are some of his general tips.
- Always keep asking yourself: What am I doing wrong?
- Entrepreneurship – there’s no balance. Only controlled sacrifice.
- Success doesn’t equal happiness
- Figure out the right people. It’s not all you.
- Don’t price things based on customers, but the cost of goods/services.
- Stupid is stupid regardless of age. I thought this point was funny.
Pek Pongpaet is an internet entrepreneur. Pongpaet’s expertise ranges from product design and development, user experience, and martial arts. Pongpaet worked at Accenture Technology Labs in the research department coming up with next generation user interfaces. At Roundarch, a technology and strategy consulting firm, Pongpaet’s work included envisioning and designing the dashboard of the future for the Tesla Model S electric car. He has given talks at Northwestern University, DePaul University, and University of Chicago on topics such as Design, Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship.
My name is Pek Pongpaet and I'm an entrepreneur, developer, designer, tech geek, martial artist, mac enthusiast, tinkerer, foodie, and blogger.
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